Saturday, October 6, 2012

I wanted to write a quick post to share that my second grade son is finally catching on to phonics and reading. I mean, he's really, truly catching on! He has been a bit of a late bloomer with his reading abilities and I was beginning to feel uncertain about his lack of progress. I have many types of phonics and reading curricula to choose from in our home, mostly because one of my other children struggled to read early on as well. I have utilized all of these with Justin over the past few years: AlphaPhonics, Hooked on Phonics, portions of Happy Phonics, Explode the Code workbooks, various readers, and homemade flash cards. None of them seemed to work and he made limited gains in his reading abilities.

This year, I bought a new book entitled At Last! A Reading Method For Every Child! by Mary Pecci. Guess what? It is working! I am so happy to see my son's progress and to report that he no longer dreads learning to read. In fact, he is enjoying it! At some point, I would like to write a review of At Last! A Reading Method For Every Child! For now, it will suffice to say that although it is not nearly as user-friendly as it could be, I really do like it because it works! For me, it has been worth the extra effort because we have been successful using it.

That said, I'm not sure if it is only the change in curriculum that has made a difference for my son. In fact, I really don't think that is the case. Instead, I believe that our success also stems from my son's growth in development and maturity over the past several months. I have found that the old saying about 'leading a horse to water' really is true in many facets of life, homeschooling included. In other words, my son needed to develop the readinesslearn to read in his own time. Prior to this year, he really wasn't ready; thus, we saw limited progress. Now that he is developmentally able to meet the challenge, he is absolutely taking off! And isn't that part of the great satisfaction of homeschooling? I love the fact that we can work according to the timetable that works best for our individual families and not the timetable imposed on students in public schools. What a blessing that is!

I hope you are having a great and fruitful school year. God bless you!